I missed this report from earlier in the week about a young boy whom Taliban operatives attempted to employ as a suicide bomber:
The story of Juma Gul [a 6 y.o., Afghan boy], who says he thwarted an effort by Taliban militants to trick him into carrying out a suicide bombing against U.S. troops provoked tears and anger at a weekend meeting of tribal leaders. Though the Taliban dismissed the story as propaganda, at a time when U.S. and NATO forces are under increasing criticism over civilian casualties, both Afghan tribal elders and U.S. military officers said they were convinced by his dramatic account.
Taliban fighters fitted a 6-year-old street kid with a bomb vest and told him to go “spray flowers” at the American soldiers. But, instead he went to an Afghan checkpoint and asked the guards, “‘Hey, can you help me? Somebody gave me this jacket, and I don’t know what’s inside, but maybe something bad.”
From the AP report:
The account from Juma Gul, a dirt-caked child who collects scrap metal for money, left American soldiers dumbfounded that a youngster could be sent on such a mission. Afghan troops crowded around the boy to call him a hero.
Juma said that sometime last month, Taliban fighters forced him to wear a vest they said would spray flowers when he touched a button. He said they told him that when he saw U.S. soldiers, “throw your body at them.”
[...]
“When they first put the vest on my body, I didn’t know what to think, but then I felt the bomb,” Juma told the Associated Press as he ate lamb and rice after being introduced to the elders at the joint U.S.-Afghan base in Ghazni. “After I figured out it was a bomb, I went to the Afghan soldiers for help.”
Smart kid. And a hero to boot. This whole incident captures in a nutshell just how monstrous and inhumane the Islamists are, and demonstrates with perfect clarity that there are no depths to which these wastes of breath will not stoop. Putting a minimum of six feet of earth between them and the rest of mankind is truly a humanitarian mission. Unless, of course, you have a political agenda to pursue:
When they won control of Congress in November, Democrats pressed their case to withdraw troops from Iraq and refocus on Afghanistan, but some are growing impatient with U.S. operations in Afghanistan as well.
[...]
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a senior defense authorizer, wants the U.S. out of Afghanistan immediately, calling operations there “futile” in trying to effect political change in a country with a tangled history.
[...]
“We are finished there, militarily speaking,” said Abercrombie, the chairman of the Air and Land Armed Services subcommittee.
“There is no useful purpose for our troops there,” Abercrombie stated in a recent interview. “The military should withdraw now,” he said, though he stressed that the U.S. could keep “isolated pockets” of special operators.
Instead of using the military to effect political change, the U.S. should have a complete diplomatic re-engagement in the region, “with an understanding that our role there should change,” Abercrombie added.
Murtha stressed that NATO forces should take a bigger role in Afghanistan. So far, the U.S. military has been the leading presence.
“I have not made the recommendation yet on withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan,” said Murtha. “Every commander I talk to still thinks that we have a chance.”But Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq, said that it is time for the U.S. military to start leaving Afghanistan and the Middle East altogether.
“We are not securing America by being there,” she pressed. “The longer we are there, the more plots start growing in our country.”
Whatever one may think about the war in Iraq, it’s difficult to conceive of any rational reason why we would abandon the people of Afghanistan to these death-cultists.
Maybe we should have Juma Gul testify before Congress. At least then the anti-war Dems could claim that finishing our job in Afghanistan is For The ChildrenTM.
[tags] Afghanistan, Taliban, terrorism, NATO, anti-war, Juma Gul, suicide bombers [/tags]
I can conceive of plenty of irrational reasons, though. And you can bet that the anti-war left, if they succeed in getting us to pull out in disgrace in Iraq, will use the exact same strategems in Afghanistan.
And of course, if we did abandon Iraq, the terrorist fanatics would turn their attention to Afghanistan, giving our anti-war types all the ammunition they needed to carry out their mission of humiliating the US whereever and whenever we attempt to get involved in trying to stop Muslim terrorists.
Look, I’d like to believe these folks have made rational calculations about Iraq, and theirs differ from mine just that they’ve seen too much biased presentation of bad news out of there, etc. But in fact, for most of them, I don’t believe that. Their obvious distaste for any good news that does appear, and their unwillingness to face up to the complete consequences of failure, belie such an intention.
Luckily, Abercrombie is an anomaly even among the Democrats, for whom Afghanistan is still widely supported as “the good war” or “the forgotten war.”
Trick is, Afghanistan is very slowly slipping from our grasp because we don’t have enough troops there… because of Iraq.
Oh and saying that if we withdraw from Iraq we’ll immediately face the same situation in Afghanistan is (pardon the pun) poppycock. OBL was excited about the invasion of Iraq precisely because it was Iraq, and not Afghanistan, that afforded the best battleground on which to fight the Americans asymmetrically. Most locals in Afghanistan hate the Taliban and want NATO to win; NATO just doesn’t have the resources to secure areas so they can develop (and it wastes resources on fruitless gestures like trying to eradicate opium).
If the U.S. were to pull out from Iraq, I doubt very many would immediately transfer over to Afghanistan, in part because Iran would suddenly have a “real” stake in keeping the country stable, instead of laughing at all the negative spillover effects directed at the U.S. In other words, transfer the banner of “Foreign Invader” from America to Iran and suddenly you have a whole different ball game… to say nothing of the various rivalries and feuds between the dozens of insurgent groups that would continue to be played out for years to come. They’d remain too occupied to come after the U.S.
Afghanistan, though, still has a good chance of turning out well… provided Musharraf can be removed democratically (and his successor is not another repeat of feckless Bhutto or Sharif), enough troops can be thrown at that border to shut it down, and at long last it gets enough money to have a reasonable chance at building an economic and institutional foundation. At the moment, Afghanistan receives in an entire year what Iraq gets in about 6 weeks or so—and we wonder why progress is halting.